The Last Interlude
by Lexalot
Summary: An estranged Lex visits Clark at the Daily Planet (WARNING: Slash relationship - Clex)


The Last Interlude  
  
By: Lexalot  
  
Summary: An estranged Lex visits Clark at the Daily Planet  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimer: If these were mine, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction about them.  
  
Pairing: Clark/Lex  
  
[Notes: This was my very first Clex/Smallville story ever.]  
  
***  
  
"Clark, open this, would you?" The words brushed past him as suddenly as the frantic person who had spoken them. She had dashed by him on her way out of her little glass workspace and dumped a fair-sized jar of Maraschino cherries in his hands. She was madly buzzing about the place, busy too calm a word to describe her energetic, work-fueled frenzy, and this was just one of the tasks she asked him to perform for her so she would have one less thing to do while she zipped all over getting yet another big story all typed up and ready to go.  
  
He tried to catch her on the way back in, "Lois, I...," but his effort was fruitless, as she darted past again without taking the slightest notice that he was looking to get her attention. "Umm... Lois?" After calling her name a couple more times, she finally stopped to acknowledge that he had been pleading with her for an interlude where he could slip into her focus between the overwhelming madness of everything. She gawked at him questioningly, annoyed that her rapid motion and harried activity was interrupted so carelessly. He wrapped his fingers around the cap on the jar and put on the air of effort, faking a hearty attempt at wrenching it open, only to prove that it would not give in the least-only to prove physical strength was not his specialty, prove it for all eyes to see. When the tight lid did not budge, he shrugged at her, punctuating the exclamation point on the end of that mimed sentence.  
  
"Jesus, Clark!" Though her tone contained the illusion of patience, there was an undercurrent ribbed with irritation. "Watch." She took the glass jar and banged the rim of the metal lid on the edge of Jimmy's desk, then unscrewed the cap as easily as if it had been open the whole while. "See. Nothing to it."  
  
"Right. Got it." He was feigning more ignorance. "I'll remember that...," he trailed off as she disappeared into her office, forgetting him again as quickly as she had taken notice, but then he continued in a quiet whisper to himself despite her abrupt departure, "next time."  
  
That was when Jimmy returned to his desk, and pried him from his lingering gaze at the closed door in front of him. "Clark?" He shook off the daze he had lapsed into and glanced over at the young man with the camera hung around his neck, asking what it was he wanted without giving the question a voice. "Perry said you've got a visitor waiting in your office."  
  
"Okay. Thank you, Jimmy." He threw a final glimpse over his shoulder at Lois' door, then turned his back on it, heading for his office across the pressroom. He paused momentarily before entering as he realized he hadn't drawn the blinds when he left, but they were shut tight now. Before he could give the thought enough consideration to warrant one of his trademark sneak peeks, he was already opening the door and entering, feeling too comfortable for caution.  
  
When he had the door gaping open, his body fully inside the suffocating space, his eyes met those of his visitor--a crafty looking figure perched upon the edge of his desk, his smile growing more menacing upon his lips as recognition crept into Clark's changing expression. When the man swathed in black silk began to clap his hands together with wide gaps in between the notes of his sharp applause, Clark urgently shut the door behind him, blocking the rest of the world out in this odd and unexpected reunion. Never removing his eyes from his surprise guest, Clark moved over to the desk, as his company slid from the top of it to walk towards the sealed white blinds, standing as though he could see beyond the overlapping solid slats--but a knowing eye cast in Clark's direction was all too telling, as it reminded him that the only thing Lex could see through was him.  
  
"That was an impressive little performance." As he made casual reference to the illusion of difficulty and the fake exertion Clark had made such a seemingly blatant pretense, Lex's tone was smugly amused, but his voice eerily congenial. "Brief, but impressive." He curled one of his fingers around one of the slats in the blinds and bent it to see across the room--Lois' office was directly ahead from that window and Clark would have known that blindfolded by lead. "She bought it, and she's a reporter. Hell, if I didn't know any better, I'd buy into this elaborate act of yours myself." His chortling was shedding warmth from his exterior to reveal a colder layer just beneath the surface. "You have her convinced you're sincerely that pathetic." Clark shook his head, a smirk spreading across his face, burgeoning with some of that familiar witty exchange he had so missed sharing with Lex. Such deliberate banter was settling, grounding for him, rooting him in a displaced sense of closeness and comfort that stemmed from times long since gone. Their eyes meeting once again, Lex couldn't resist the playful temptation to twist the knife. "She actually feels sorry for you."  
  
Clark put his hand to his face, a slightly mischievous smile of his own forming as he slowly and very carefully pulled the thick black-rimmed glasses from his face, shedding with them the facade of vulnerability and the misgivings that it carried.  
  
"She sees you, but she never really sees you. Lana all over again, huh, Clark." As Lex made his haphazardly callous remark with more than a vague hint of innuendo cutting those calm waters--Lex had always seen him--he watched Clark purposefully fold his arms across his chest, appearing all the more noble and powerful in this different posture. Lex made a decent mockery of his genuine awe. "Ooo." He cocked his head to one side, and grinned widely in a taunting counter to Clark's defensive stance. "Zero to Superman in 3.5 seconds." For a minute, his eyes narrowed, scalding with derisive confusion. "That's a little slow for you, isn't it?"  
  
Clark sighed audibly, bored with these stalling tactics that were filler material for a real and deeply hidden agenda. "What do you want, Lex?"  
  
Lex stayed the course of his inane conversation without flinching in wake of a vain question he avoided without needing to dodge its weight. His eyes soaked in the sight of Clark's majestic stature, tall and proud, riddled with goodness and purity, yet swimming in cheap gray polyester, conspicuously devoid of his usual primary colors. "It lacks something without the suit though." Just as the dullness of that observation poked into his tone with a disappointed ridicule, a spark was born, and his tease intensified a step in the old direction. Pale eyes lit by Kryptonite kindling were ablaze with otherwise subtle excitement. Lex stepped forward, approaching boldly with a reminiscent vestige of desire apparent in him. "Are you wearing it under there?" His finger peeled back the white of Clark's shirt collar no more than an inch as he tried to peer into the shallows of the fabric, searching for a solid trace of blue or red, but that was as far as he got before Clark knocked his hand away adamantly, unfazed by Lex's advances.  
  
Will power was definitely one of his better human skills. "Lex..."  
  
Again, before acknowledgement was even a pipe dream, Clark was drowned in the surf of being disregarded. Lex recovered gracefully from his prompt rejection and wandered around the room to the claustrophobic area behind the cold metal desk. "I have to ask you something. This has been bothering me for quite some time." Clark tossed a wary eye over his shoulder at Lex as he leaned close from the opposite side of the desk, practically whispering as though he were about to say something obscene, but his brazen nonchalance was in full gear. "Where do you hide the cape?"  
  
Clark couldn't possibly take the question seriously, and just pitched an answer out for Lex to grab, hoping all this repartee was leading them to a relevant point, or somewhere remotely interesting at least. "What I do with it when I'm not wearing it is none of your business."  
  
"So, you're not wearing it?" He inquired as if he believed it a clue, then yanked open the thin top drawer of the cold gray desk, seeking as though he knew the thing to be hiding. "Is it in here?" His manners, like his tone, took on that of a child partaking of a game he knew to be silly. "No." Finding no sign of change in Clark, he moved on to the large gray filing drawers and jerked the bottom one wide open. "How about here?" Nothing was there but paperwork. "Damn." A fast and humorous glance and he was already preparing to abandon this short-lived recreation in favor of switching strategies again.  
  
Clark knew this routine--Lex was testing, waiting until he found something that worked, then he would exploit the method to achieve his means, whatever they might have been. He was willing to follow Lex through the process to see where the end of this twisted path lay. "Do you really think I'd hide it in my file cabinet at The Daily Planet?" He posed defiantly, mocking Lex's intelligence the way Lex mocked his secrets. "You think I'd just leave it lying around my office?"  
  
Lex scoffed, hurling torches down another dark and empty corridor of conversation. "This is what passes for an office around here?"  
  
Clark took stock of his mundane and humble surroundings. "Well, it doesn't have a pool table with red felt, but it's got a certain charm."  
  
His arrogance raised several notches to don a previous superior tone. "Abandoned buildings that are about to be condemned have 'a certain charm', Clark."  
  
Lex was lighting matches, and dropping them at random, hoping to ignite something that would burst into flames and burn them both down along with everything else--it was in his destructive nature, and one day, the self-destruct button would go external. Clark had seen the warning signs for himself... But the past aside, he still didn't know what Lex was doing here, now.  
  
"Are you here for a reason, or did you drop by just to torture me at work?"  
  
Finally, Lex halted, haunted by Clark's directness and both the good and bad memories associated with this way Clark had about broaching the truth. Silence came, danced about the room, then waited, reluctant to leave--like Lex himself, so unsure why he had thought he could come here and just see Clark again.  
  
A response rose in the back of his throat and he realized it was coming from someplace in him that wasn't being obstructed or hindered by large volumes of complicated thought. "I've got the Ferrari. I could give you a ride to your apartment."  
  
Clark was almost caught off guard by the sentiment represented in that disguised admission. As much as he would have liked to entertain the notion that they could move backwards in time and reverse all the damage that had been done between them, his reply was one biting word of instantaneous refusal. "No."  
  
Lex's suave demeanor did not falter even when his angry eyes betrayed his dwindling confidence and courage. "Why not? Flying?"  
  
Clark repaid Lex's cynicism with his own. "Walking."  
  
Lex was perfectly still, a sad nostalgia whetting his tone. "You used to be more fun."  
  
"You used to be a friend." The words were deft and sharp, wielded like a tiny dagger, painful and effective.  
  
Lex stared at him for a fleeting moment, eyes flashing wounded for a second so elusive there was no chance for it to register, even at superspeed. "That hurt." Clark's statement stirred up inner turmoil in him, but nothing rippled on the smooth surface, not even a wave or tremor in his controlled inflection.  
  
"Did it." It was not a question at all, but instead assumed the shape of a harsh statement, highly skeptical in tone. Then, curiosity got the better of him--emotions got the better of him, and he altered his criticism to be the question it should have been. "Did it?" Clark was the one pushing now, and the hollow expression he received in response, distant and chilled, told him Lex did not care to be the one pushed. Silence again--glaring eyes and omissions again. Oceans of things unsaid and undone creating an even larger rift than existed before this awkward interlude. Lex was miles away from anywhere they had ever been together, and therein, disturbingly cold-blooded. "I didn't think so." Clark's heart bore quiet injury as he saw no trace of the man he knew who would have been speared by that reckless comment because he used to be more than a mere friend. "There was a time when it actually would've hurt, a time I remember when you really cared."  
  
Lex rebounded instantly, wiping off this bad taste with more wisdom that was too cryptic and less than insightful. "Things change."  
  
"No, Lex. People do." The words came rapidly, like an automatic measure of truth that had been patiently waiting to be addressed. A significant amount of bitterness had been injected into that caustic sting of philosophy--evidence of love lost, begrudgingly forsaken in light of greater goods and crueler truths. Clark could not understand what had compelled Lex to descend on him with this impromptu encounter, though he suspected it was a half-hearted gesture to right all the problems between them that only seemed all the more wrong now. "Why did you come here?"  
  
"I was just asking myself the same question." He paused as his expression glazed over with hostility. "Don't worry. I'm about to rectify that mistake."  
  
Clark worried that this could be the last time they met on leisurely terms. Next time, would they just be acquaintances? Strangers on the street? Would Clark be just another reporter to him and get the accompanying Luthor-spun treatment? Clark knew the thread that had been Lex was fraying, and he was genuinely concerned that it might snap sooner rather than later, and all this tension and animosity would be an underlying factor in that inevitability. He considered the possibility that Lex had even come to him out of desperation, wanting solace or help or anything benign and optimistic that would ease his troubled soul. Clark's appeal came as he watched Lex reach for the doorknob, then swiftly open it to expedite his exit, as if he needed nothing more than to leave. "Lex, wait..."  
  
Not a glance, not a hint of hesitation--just icy resentment. "See you around, Kent." 


End file.
